Washington has approved licenses for roughly 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 chips, with each license allowing for up to 75,000 units. Despite this, Beijing has told its tech sector to wait, resulting in a deadlock. To address the issue, Jensen Huang has been added to Trump’s trip to Beijing.
The situation highlights a significant US-China tech rivalry that is now snarling even approved trade. Nvidia, the world's most valuable company and dominant chipmaker, is currently caught between dueling national priorities.
Before U.S. export curbs tightened, Nvidia commanded about 95% of China's advanced chip market. As a result of the ongoing standoff, Chinese firms are increasingly turning to domestic chipmakers like Huawei in a drive to reduce dependence on Western technologies.